


Covetous

by Milieu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Character Study, Descent into Madness, Gen, Heroes to Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26712412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: An examination of the overlooked things that drove Orochimaru to what he became.
Relationships: Jiraiya & Orochimaru & Tsunade (Naruto), Orochimaru & Sarutobi Hiruzen
Kudos: 19





	Covetous

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe this isn't strictly canon-complicant, but canon also did fuckall in terms of giving Orochimaru consistent motivation or actually explaining his past at all, so. My city now.

So many people do horrible things, _are_ horrible things. So few start out that way.

Decades later, Hiruzen will tell the story of a white snake on a grave and what its appearance foretold, and he'll perhaps shake his head at his foolishness then. Maybe it's the foolishness of telling a young, directionless orphan his destiny far too early. Maybe the foolishness of not foreseeing Orochimaru's fate for himself, even then.

As if things could ever be that simple.

Decades later, Orochimaru himself will remember that story, and that will be his origin, because that's easier. That's the better tale. It's uncomplicated. It makes sense; he was born a snake in every way.

The irony and tragedy of Orochimaru is that something as simple as _prophecy_ wouldn't drive a man to do what he did. The irony and tragedy is that he always had a choice.

The irony and tragedy starts on the day that Tsunade takes a lonely, isolated orphan boy by the hand and brings him home with her, because she can't stand it when people are sad, and she hates even more when they won't admit it. She's young and scrappy, and it's hard to come up with solutions to problems that don't involve hitting, but hitting people never makes them happier, so Tsunade does the next best thing: she takes Orochimaru to the people who make _her_ happy.

There in the Senju compound, eating a home-cooked meal, surrounded by warmth and light and the booming laughter of the First Hokage (and he's so _loud_ , he's so big and so _alive_ , Orochimaru has never seen anyone who seems to _exist_ as fully as Senju Hashirama does and truly, he never will again) is when it starts. That's the first day that Orochimaru understands in a real, tangible sense, the things that he doesn't have.

The infatuation with power begins there, because it is the first time that Orochimaru sees what power and success can _get_ you.

Hashirama, so full of life and warmth, has a habit of doing more damage than he realizes even with the best intentions. The pain of Madara's betrayal and departure fades and scars, but it never truly goes away. He can't forget what could have been, and when he's had a few drinks, his tongue is loose and his heart heavy with both nostalgia and regret. He's lived such a full life and has so many stories, and it is straight from him that Orochimaru first hears about the Uchiha. What they too could have been, what they _were_ besides the village's police force who are never quite trusted themselves.

(His disappointment so many years later is so _bitter_ , that he can only bring back an empty copy of what Hashirama once was. It isn't satisfying like he wanted it to be. At that point in the far-flung future, it's hard to remember how he wanted it to be. At that point, it's all about power, but even then there is an empty, aching echo of what he used to want.)

In these days there is no foreshadowing or prophecy. There's Orochimaru, and Tsunade with her home full of love that she just wants to share, and Jiraiya with the trouble he drags the others into. They all have the roles they're expected to fulfill, and they fill them easily, all so full of promise in different ways. In those days, it's Jiraiya who is rough around the edges, the troublemaker, the one people doubt. Tsunade is rough too, in her own way, but she's pedigreed in a way the other two aren't, and it's clear even at a young age that she's full of both talent and raw power.

And Orochimaru? He's the quiet one, odd but in the way that the adults look at and can find a way to approve of. He's the smart one, the curious and insightful one. Everyone encourages it once they pick up on it, and nobody questions what he's learning, growing up knowing almost nothing but war and death, all too often aware of what he himself lacks. It will be years and years before anyone even thinks of trying to reign him in, and then it will be far too late.

There are times when he's happy. Times that he's even content. But as he grows, the world grows wider and colder as well, and none of them can reclaim the innocence (the ignorance) of what kind of world they truly live in once they know.

(Maybe that's part of it too, his desperation to reclaim what _was_ , even as he knows that he's always chasing a shadow. He knows so much. Sometimes he'd give anything to not know, to once again be a blank slate with no impression of the world. Maybe there would be some hope then that the world would make a kinder mark on him a second time around.)

There are the breaking points that everyone knows, but the acknowledgement of which fades with time. Dan. Nawaki. Orochimaru standing there staring at the corpse of a child, a boy that he knew, a boy that he'd watched alongside Tsunade and Jiraiya as he laughed and ran in the rolling grass, telling them that he'd be the greatest Hokage that ever lived. Better than Grandpa, better than Uncle Tobi, and even better than you when you're Hokage, Orochimaru-kun.

(He doesn't know when he started wanting the position itself as much as the vague idea of power. It might not have been a tangible idea to him before Nawaki said something about it, until someone believed in him without conceit or ulterior motive.)

Standing next to Nawaki's body, Orochimaru stares at the blood around his mouth, at the wounds, because that is easier than looking Tsunade in the face. Eloquence is not what he does. He can't say the right thing to comfort her even though the feeling is there, even though he wishes he could rip the emotion right out of his chest and give it to her in place of words.

It isn't fair. Death shouldn't be like this. Why should there be such an unknowable, uncontrollable _force_ in whose shadow they all have to live? There is, in that moment, a visceral, crushing horror at the idea of standing here again with Tsunade the one lying bloodied, or Jiraiya, or their sensei. Or even Orochimaru himself, lying cold and empty while the people he loves grieve.

What good does grief do? What a useless emotion. Why did humans evolve to feel loss and pain? If they have to live with the ever-present specter of death, why couldn't they at least be indifferent to it? If they have to hate and fear it, why wasn't there some way to control it?

Shinobi control the elements, the body, the mind. They found ways to seal away the tailed beasts and bend them to human will. Why can't death, too, be tamed?

There has to be a way. Someone, somewhere, has to have the key locked away inside them.

He just has to find it, and when he does, anything he has done will have been worth it.

That's when the justification starts. It's small and slow, like any other seed, but the roots dig into his heart before he even knows they're there. Anything will have been worth it. Death is a cold, stark terror, and living in fear of it is endless suffering. If he can fix that - _when_ he can fix that - it will have been worth any price.

Orochimaru is a genius. Everyone has told him so. He is the only one who can do what must be done to stop the fear and pain, and so anything he does will be excusable. He never thinks it in so many words, but the sentiment is always there. Eventually, the need for a justification at all fades, but by that time, he can't and won't try to shake the sense that he is still _right_ to do what he's doing anyway.

People think that the irony and tragedy is that Orochimaru started out wanting to do good. That he was corrupted, that he let a lust for power eclipse his noble intentions. Maybe all of that is true, but the real tragedy is that he always knew what he was doing.

It's not the things he is doing that Orochimaru grows blind to, but the things that he _wants_. 

That's why, when they find the children from Ame, he dismisses them. The kindest thing would be to kill them, before they can suffer any more. They already fear death. Why drag it out for them? It's futile to try to save them from it when he still has so much work to do. He doesn't have time for futility. That's why he becomes Danzo's hands. Why he lusts so fiercely after the title of Hokage, why he is so infuriated when he is passed over by the man who is supposed to believe in him.

Didn't Hiruzen say that Orochimaru had greatness in his future? Didn't they share that moment by his parents' grave? How can Hiruzen have forgotten, how can he deny Orochimaru the success that he's earned, that he's _owed_?

Don't any of them understand that he needs it more than anyone else? Don't they see that until he succeeds, everyone will continue to suffer?

Eventually, "everyone" stops mattering. Orochimaru will succeed. Orochimaru _must_ succeed, even if he no longer remembers the small, distant reasons that he once wanted power. He has to focus on preserving himself, because if he falls, everything goes with him. He must live. He _must_ live. Death cannot catch him. There is a yawning emptiness inside of him whenever he thinks of it, a terror greater than anything else. He will not die. He cannot. It goes on and on and on, like a snake endlessly eating itself. Orochimaru's descent into madness and depravity is not a spiral; it's an ouroboros. He will never stop cannibalizing himself in the pursuit of his goals. He can't stop even if he wanted to.

Prophecies are horrible because of their inevitability. In this way, they too are like death. Maybe that's why the story seems so fitting for Orochimaru at a glance, the man who so desperately wanted to fight fate.

It's easier that way. It hurts less. The kind of end that one can look at and grow to accept. It's the kind of story that you can comfort yourself with. It's better for the people like Orochimaru to have always been destined for evil.

The irony and tragedy is that when ignorance is all-consuming, the snake will have a chance to bite its tail once again.


End file.
